How much can a seller on Canada Ebay sell before its considered being done as a business.

[33nhl]

I recently got an email from Ebay Canada to update my profile with SIN and other info.

Ebay already has that but i called and was told on the phone that Now since Jan 1st 2025

under new law that Ebay has to report to RCA sales of 30 or more items or if amount reaches $2800.00 or passes it, so in other words if you sell 50 cards at $5.00 each thus being over 30 items they will report it to RCA under this new bill law that was passed even though it amounts to $250.00

I could be wrong but wasn't the threshold $30000.00 and it didn't matter if you sold 500 or 5000 items with in the same calender year??? that it would then been reported to RCA that one person sold $30000.00 or more what ever items they were on Ebay.

Seems to me abit sketchy cause i dint get more clearly info on this cause if the threshold was/is $30000.00 in sales that then Ebay would have to report it to RCA but now it seems they have to report it even if someone sells 31 items and it dont matter if the total is $1400.00

I have feeling RCA is going to hit every seller as being income no matter the amount of items one sells or amount $$$ sold for,  so to then pay tax as income.

What you all think on this??

[fatdane]

I think you are getting numbers for GST/HST and income tax mixed up. For GST/HST you have to register , collect & remit if your worlwide sales are over 30,000.

If you are buying things for resale then you are operating a business, and have to report the NET income on your income tax return. If you are just cleaning out accumuated junque from your residence, and not replacing it you are not operating a business.

If you are operarting a business you can deduct many expenses from your sales, ie Advertising, shipping charges, and many more. If you meander through the CRA website you can find the form that you should be using for calculating your business profits  and losses. The form  is T2125, Statement of Business or Professional Activities.

If you are going to operate  online, Ebay or other places, you should probably talk to an accountant that has experience with online business 

I'll repeat - Don't mx up handling GST/HST , a sales tax, with Income tax.

[recped]

If you buy an item with the intent to resell you ARE a business (how you are registered on eBay is irrelevant).

The $30,000 threshold you mention is the level at which you are required to registered for GST, it has nothing to do with Income Tax. Note that sellers below $30,000 in revenue should seriously consider registering so that they can recover all the GST/HST they have paid (shipping, eBay fees, supplies, goods for resale etc.)

The reporting requirements from the CRA are new, effective this year. It was just a matter of time before they would do this as the amount of people failing to report "gig economy" income was getting out of hand.

There is really no justification that an eBay seller making a $10,000 profit has been able to get away with reporting nothing while the same person getting a part-time job gets a T-4 and reports every penny.

[33nhl]

So in other words a person decides to sell 1 or 2 cards for example by iether them selves or using a consignment seller and because those 2 cards from where ever the person got, sell on Ebay for $5000.00 thus the person has to declare them as income???  

So in a wy is no diiferent then what USA govermnet has done for USA sellers that anything over $600.00 in sales on ebay they will get tax report income to be added to there tax filing.

[marnotom!]

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@33nhl wrote:

So in other words a person decides to sell 1 or 2 cards for example by iether them selves or using a consignment seller and because those 2 cards from where ever the person got, sell on Ebay for $5000.00 thus the person has to declare them as income???  

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When my wife and I started selling on eBay in the late 1990s, we were advised by a friend who's a financial planner that we were required to report the income that we received from our eBay sales.

Near the bottom of the last page of your income tax return is a section where you declare that you have reported "income from all sources."  That would include eBay.

The way I see it (and I'm no accountant, so get this verified professionally), you should have been reporting your eBay income to the CRA since day one, even if eBay didn't send this information to the CRA.  It's up to you do do the math on your tax return or elsewhere to demonstrate that this income should not be subject to taxation.  Simply believing that this is non-taxable income isn't sufficient.  You have to prove that to CRA.

CRA regards sales made through sites such as eBay to be part of the "platform economy".  Information on that starts on this page and goes on from there:

https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/programs/about-canada-revenue-agency-cra/compliance/platform...

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

You have to keep records if you sell online in any volume. It has little to do with eBay and more to do with the IRS and CRA wanting to crackdown on businesses that don't report their business income. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individuals/topics/about-your-tax-return/tax-re...

Personal-use property is likely what you need to learn about documenting if you are selling pieces from your collection and not making a profit.

If you are buying collections to flip, or buying single items to flip, it's unlikely the CRA would see that as falling under personal-use. One thing that they might look at is how long you held on to the item before you sold it. If I bought a Gretzky rookie card in 2015 for $500 and sold it for $1000 in 2025, I could probably justify that as personal-use proprety. If I bought a Gretzky rookie card in January for $500 and sold it in February for $1000, they would likely argue that it was a business transaction.

I think you may have made similar threads in the past. If you're highly concerned about this, you enjoy selling online, and you don't want the monkey on your back of wondering what an audit might bring, I would recommend going to an accountant to at least get your records for personal-use property setup. If this is a case where you're actually engaging in business, but you disagree about what SHOULD constitute business, then personal-use propery wouldn't be relevant.

Keep in mind, I am not a lawyer/accountant, so the above isn't legal or accounting advice. Go seek the advice of a pro, not a guy who sells jerseys on eBay. 😅

Best of luck.

[33nhl]

I called up CRA and info i was given as example,  that even if you had an old wall clock 20 years old and decide to sell it such as on ebay, and sells say for $4000.00 although you may had it for 20 years you have to show what it was worth, although its personal item and may have cost say $300.00 and now someone is willing to pay $4000.00 that would be considered capital gains on $3700.00 even though is your personal effects property. So the issue is bigger then we actually may think it is. I have cards from the 1990s and early 2000s and i bet many more seller have cards from them years or earlier, they are collections so we decide now to sell them on Ebay and then CRA says those are now capital gains cause say cards were $10.00 in value or you dont know what they were worth cause grand parent gave them to you, and now 30 years later cause you want to sell them and if you get abit more $$ CRA says you have to pay tax cause you gained profit. So your personal effects will be slapped as capitals gains if you sell them online, thats what it now appears to be going forward in 2025.

As agian we could say show as personall effects of sold item/s meanwhile CRA will say it dont matter and is capital gains.

So next thing is capital gains when you do a yard sale. 

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

Read the link in my post, it outlines what you are talking about. Personal-use property. 

Everything you sell for personal-use property is considered to be worth $1000, even if it sells for $50 - but any item sold $1000 or below is tax free. 

So if you bought a clock for less than $4000 and it appreciated in value to be worth $4000 when you sell it, you are responsible to pay tax on the difference. Let's say it was worth $500 and you sold it for $4000, you would be responsible for tax on $3000 ($4000 minus the $1000 cap). 

But if you bought it for $4000+ and had documentation to prove that you paid that, you would not realize a profit on it - but you also couldn't write off the difference as a tax loss since it's a personal transaction and not a business one. You would still need to report the sale on your income tax along with the cost of the clock, and keep records to support the fact that it was purchased for personal use and based on what you paid you didn't not gain any income.

While I respect that you are entitled to your opinion, I'm not really comfortable discussing the politics behind tax law on here, regardless of what side I fall on. If you're interested in help about how to navigate it, I am more than happy to share what I know. With the obvious understanding that I am not a lawyer/accountant, so you should assume it could all be incorrect, and you should validate the information on your own with a professional.

In terms of inventory that you don't have receipts for, you might be able to assign a reasonable cost to them. You would have to explore this with an accountant. With that said, if I look at your eBay store I would assume you're running a business. It would be difficult to defend the idea that you have dozens of Tim Horton's collectors albums. The picture below may not look like personal-use to the CRA if you are ever audited. To me as a layman, if I see that, it looks like someone engaging in business with reasonable expectation of profit.

My perception is that you're probably a collector, who like most collectors finds ways to "side hustle" a profit purely to support their collecting, and that you don't like the idea how that is considered business activity because the money goes back into your collecting. If that is accurate, the reality is that the CRA isn't going to care that the profits from say flipping Tim Horton's binders went to buy a PC card, they will only care that the profits exist. I am not criticizing you, I am just providing you with insight. If you're concerned to the point that it's causing you distress, go see an accountant and get setup so that everything is proper and above board. You may actually end up saving money in the long run, especially if an accountant determines what you are doing does qualify as business activities and you can register to collect GST. (Assuming all the platforms you sell on like eBay already collect it.)

[recped]

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@33nhl wrote:

or you dont know what they were worth cause grand parent gave them to you, and now 30 years later cause you want to sell them and if you get abit more $$ CRA says you have to pay tax cause you gained profit.

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If you sold something that was given to you as a gift you "cost" is $0.00.

[dinomitesales]

You operate an eBay store with 2,000+ items and have sold nearly 5.5K items. It's preposterous to even suggest that you aren't running a business.

Any CRA employee with half a brain would look at your eBay history and say "yup, that's a business". To suggest otherwise is ridiculous.

I don't even understand how this is a conversation - the only thing that has changed is that eBay is complying with CRA regulations to report your income; this should have no bearing on anything unless you were intentionally not reporting your income (business or otherwise) in previous years. It's always been a requirement to report all sources of income when filing your taxes.

Are you saying that despite being on eBay for nearly 25 years and selling nearly 5.5K items, you've never reported this income to the government?

[mrdutch1001]

absolutely correct!

It is sellers like OP who don't accept the fact that their "side hustle" all these years was indeed a "business", and for which monies should have been declared as other sources of income to CRA.

[33nhl]

It is cheapper to have a monthly store subscription cause after the free 250 allowed listings if were to list 1000 cards in range $1.00 to $10.00 per month them 1000 listings would cost $400.00/per month thus many have a basic store subscription for that purpose other wise i think we all be nuts to be paying $400.00 per month to list 1000 and at the end of the year the listing fees alone would total $4800.00 and if did sell them 1000 cards at $10.00 be  $10000.00 in sales for the year Eaby though would take %14 around the $1700.00 mark with the tax thus from $10000.00 in sales $6500.00 would be taken by Ebay.

Now if CRA looks at to and thinks cause it says the word (store) on ebay and they represent it as a business then you can surely kiss bye bye to Ebay by many.  Who in the world lists 5000 or 10000 or 20000 listings a month on Ebay and pays 40 cents for each one??

[33nhl]

Lol as mentioned before most have the bare min store monthly subscription to off set paying $0.40 extra per listing where it be as an auction or for the 30 day period otherwise no one will pay $0.40 per listing.

As for sold items any one could have succeeded back in the early days by offering paper clips for $0.50 cents and mailing them for $2.00 to then increase volumes as sold items as if sold 2000 items or more with in months including increasing feedback ratings status and thus in no time would becomes Ebay Top Rated seller and then get discounts and perks and free extra listings, cause back then 1996-2006 we only had 50 free listings and had to pay for the rest unless there were up coming free listing days and we used Turbo Lister to have pre set them listings up and storage them for the free listing days, otherwise just like now no one will pay $0.40 cents per listing and try to  list 500 items with in one month. Its much cheapper to suscribe to basic store for $22.50 a month and can list up to 10000 listings thus workds out to way less the 1 cent per listing per 30 days or auction up to 10 days. 

[recped]

How many times do we have to tell you that if you are selling on eBay it makes absolutely no difference to ANYONE (including CRA) if you have an Store or not.

[marnotom!]

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@33nhl wrote:

Now if CRA looks at to and thinks cause it says the word (store) on ebay and they represent it as a business then you can surely kiss bye bye to Ebay by many.  Who in the world lists 5000 or 10000 or 20000 listings a month on Ebay and pays 40 cents for each one??

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I think @dinomitesales' point is not that you have a store, but that you have enough items for sale to justify having a store.  As @recped says, it doesn't matter whether or not you have a store:  It's the number of items you've sold and have for sale that's going to get attention.